We have asked our readers a few questions on their PHP workflows, hosting and tools. We are very curious about this, because we want to build the best PHP PaaS for dev guys. Here are some of our learnings:

About 160 people finished the survey (cool!)

Zend is the most popular Framework

More people deploy code with Git than with FTP

Memcache is the most popular caching engine

MySQL is still THE database of choice, followed by MongoDB

Most coders want SSH access

A fully managed platform is more important than full root access

A multistage deployment (testing, staging, live) is preferred

Reliability, performance and price are core factors for hosting

Thanks everyone for taking the time. We have already implemented some new features based on this feedback. The survey was a fun ride, we have currently set up another more general one here: coders-survey.com. And yes: We are rolling out the private BETA soon. Download Survey Results printable PDF

Written answers, grouped and ordered by importance

What other software requirements you have?

PHP >= v5.4

mod_rewrite is a must

Caching (APC/Memache/Redis)

Direct file-system access via SFTP/SSH

SSL, file storage, gd and cron task

Version Control (git/svn)

Composer/packagist integration

“Must have” SSH commands/tasks:

Basic file manipulation (find, cp, mv, mkdir, tar, zip)

Log access (tail -s php_error.log)

Misc (cron, vim, wget)

Describe your preferred Backup strategy

rsync over ssh

scheduled backup to Amazon S3

tar.gz and download via ftp after

daily and on-demand exports of db’s and application files to a server off-site